


That's Some Dream

by lesbianmedusa



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F, cophine - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 11:42:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianmedusa/pseuds/lesbianmedusa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after season one. Delphine has a nightmare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That's Some Dream

She was running and running, further and further, harder and faster. She ran until her legs burnt from exertion and her breath came in sharp intakes and short gasps. She ran until a dead-end in the form of a plain white wall meant she could run no longer. She bowed over, hands on her knees, her body catching up with her; she’d been running on adrenaline and now she’d stopped it felt like all the muscles in her body were slowly setting themselves alight.

                Everything around her was perfectly bleach white: clinically sterile. There was a slight odour that was reminiscent of hospitals underneath a heavier copper odour. It smelt the way blood tasted. She turned to find the source of the coppery, blood smell in front of her. In a room of entirely white stood a metal bed, like the examining tables you’d find in morgues. This wasn’t a morgue table; the figure on the bed was hooked up to fluids and monitors which were maintaining a constant beeping noise, one of the only surrounding sounds. The beep… beep… beep of the monitor was accompanied in irregular instances by weak, pathetic coughs; evidence of existence, if only barely so.

                The figure on the table was pale, maybe in another life she’d blushed with embarrassment, laughed until her cheeks were pink or tanned in the sun but glimpsing at her now it was hard to imagine any of these things and she seemed only capable of a skin tone to match the empty white surrounding her. She wasn’t laying flat on her black, instead she lay on her side curled in an almost foetus shape; an artist would appreciate the irony and symbolism of someone so close to death replicating a position seen in early life forms, a scientist would suggest the position was done in order to preserve body heat, a survival instinct, and a psychologist would diagnose it as a want for physical affection. Delphine didn’t care for the analysis; she didn’t care for much else other than the constant beep which was eerily comforting.

                Dreadlocks spilled around the figure, a stark contrast against the pale, blue hospital gown her body was swathed in. Looking upon her now Delphine saw very little of the Cosima she knew – her Cosima – in the person lying on the table in front of her. Her body lay limp where it had once been energetic and full of life, her face showed no sign of emotion. The grin Delphine loved best was gone and her eyes were shut, her glasses laid untouched on a metal bedside table.

                “A wonderful creation, isn’t she?” murmured a familiar voice that was barely a whisper in theory but felt like a shout when it only had the beep of the monitor to contend with. “Although, perhaps we’d agree for different reasons. Still, I know you can appreciate the scientific miracle she represents.” The sense of righteousness in Leekie’s voice as he spoke with such self-assurance caused a kind of white fury to erupt within Delphine that she couldn’t put into words. His ability to dehumanise and objectify someone so full of humanity down to the subject of an experiment meant that there was no ounce of Delphine that could have despised him more if she tried. Leekie looked at Cosima and Delphine knew that all saw was his successful, perfect copy of DNA in the flesh, where it was to be best admired, his own Frankenstein’s monster.

                “She’s dying.” She replied obviously, realising the stupidity of her statement she continued, “You must have developed a cure. If you’d just be able to treat her you’d be able to save her.” As much as she was sickened at the idea of cooperating with Leekie ever again Delphine knew she’d beg if she had to.

                “You’re correct; of course we have a cure. But there will be no treatment.” Leekie stated in that soft tone that suggested he was several steps ahead of whatever she was thinking. Delphine was sure she could even see the hint of a smile playing at his lips, threatening to reveal itself.

                “But she’ll die…” She started, her eyebrows furrowing in confusion, “How could you benefit from her death? You were trying to prevent the others from being killed, I don’t – I don’t understand…” Delphine glanced from Cosima back to Leekie who was standing on the opposite side of the table, too close to Cosima for her comfort.

                By this point he was smiling as if she’d mentioned some inside joke he had with himself, he was laughing at her inability to decipher him. He took a thrill from knowing everything to come and having the power to reveal it to someone who knew only a few elements of the entire formula.

“You see, Delphine, in that incident we interfered for the sake of the experiment. If, in this incident, we decided to interfere we would essentially forsake the experiment.” Leekie spoke as a master puppeteer; he manipulated words like he manipulated people and science. “Having several subjects killed off would have sabotaged our results, skewing them to the point of inaccuracy. Cosima, on the other hand, was always expected to die like this. It’s written in her DNA, the purest truth a scientist could hope for. To cure her would be an external factor our experiment was not accounting for and so it simply cannot be done.” Delphine had been counting on Leekie’s high value of his own creations to save Cosima’s life and to find out that he was indifferent to whether she lived or died blindsided her. Before she could even form any kind of comprehensible response in her head, she noticed Leekie expertly beginning to unplug the wires supplying nutritious fluids and necessary saline to Cosima.

That was enough to spur Delphine into some kind of action, “No!” She screamed, ripping his hands away from the machines, desperately trying to re-plug what Leekie had undone. He laughed coldly and twisted her hands away without even flinching, effortlessly. She tried to thrash at him in an attempt to loosen his grip but he twisted her hands even further and she had no doubt he wouldn’t hesitate from shattering all the ligaments in her hand if she continued to cause him any more inconvenience. With his free hand Leekie continued to unplug various wires. Delphine cursed the fact that there seemed to be no kind of medical equipment around, if there’d been a scalpel nearby she would’ve plunged it into Leekie’s chest without hesitation, “Je t’en supplie pour arrêter!”

“Come, come Delphine begging never suited you.” He whispered dangerously, the hidden threat his voice always encompassed now not so subtle. He looked down at Cosima, admiring her for one last time, “Such a waste, I’ll admit, I would rather she didn’t have to go like this. However, it’s beyond my control; instructions to follow, rules to conform to…” With that he unplugged the last wire and for a second, the room was eerily quiet then came the long drone of the heart monitor as it flat lined. Cosima was gone. Delphine looked at her body lying there on the table and even after all her years of scientific education she could not for the life of her comprehend that the same body in front of her could, in a matter of seconds, go from a life form capable of individual thought and an uncountable amount of other processes to a corpse that was essentially a shell of what it had so recently been. It was the age-old complexity that was so surreal to Delphine it caused her to just stare blankly for seconds, waiting for her mind to process something, anything of what was going on. The last thing she heard was Leekie’s laugh in the dead, ringing silence then she was gasping and opening her eyes to completely different surroundings.

She was in bed, Cosima’s bed, and it had been another nightmare. She wondered if she should stop sleeping in Cosima’s apartment, maybe it triggered the nightmares; perhaps being so close to where Cosima had been seeped into her subconscious and haunted her sleep. It was a silly theory really but she still thought there was some truth to it. The truth was even if she knew definitively that sleeping here was a bad idea Delphine didn’t think she could stop herself. She knew Sarah and Felix thought it was strange, Alison probably would too if she knew what had happened but having sold herself over to Rachel she wasn’t really up-to-date with the situation anymore. Alison probably had the right idea, Delphine thought dejectedly, cooperating with those above her; at least that lessened her chances of getting killed. Still, they’d all made their decisions and they’d battled the consequences and they had all lost but some more so than others. So Delphine decided that yes, she would stay in Cosima’s bed, for now anyway because although it reminded her of everything she had lost at least here in this apartment she _felt_ a little less lost. Cosima would probably have teased her for the illogical ambiguity of her thoughts but if she were here Delphine wouldn’t be clinging onto the remnants of Cosima’s life to stop herself from feeling so lost. At least here in this apartment, filled with precarious piles of books, with posters on the theory of evolution and the periodic table hanging on the walls Delphine could still feel Cosima’s life, the energy it could exude, even in death. 


End file.
